Curators are not a happy lot these days. Indeed, they’re “the embodiment of demoralization, resentment, anxiety, stress, and alienation over what was happening in his or her museum.” There is a mounting chorus of voices “articulating this critical disconnect in art museums. The gap is not necessarily between curators and their directors—though in some institutions that exists as well. Mostly the conflict is between the dramatically changing role of the art museum and the mounting pressures imposed by those changes on the people who have traditionally been the custodians, students, and interpreters of the art objects inside their institutions.”
Category: visual
Duke Versus Gallery
London’s National Gallery and the Duke of Northumberland are disputing a Raphael painting the Duke’s family loaned the museum and now wants to sell. “The Madonna of the Pinks has been on loan to the National Gallery for 10 years, and the gallery said it had a deal with the previous duke that would have given it first option on the painting. But the duke said neither side has evidence of such an agreement. He was also angered by stories saying proceeds of the sale would go towards a garden renovation, and that the painting had been hanging forgotten in a dusty corridor until a National Gallery expert spotted it.”
Dallas Museum At 100
The Dallas Museum of Art is 100 years old. “The museum has grown enormously over the past century. From a tiny handful of paintings occupying one corner of a room in the Dallas Public Library, the collection has grown to 22,000 objects filling a building of 340,000 square feet.”
My Life As A Critic
Village Voice art critic Jerry Saltz seems a little overwhelmed by by his job as an art critic. “It is a thrilling, humbling, weird business. You go to shows, sometimes as many as 40 a week, looking, always looking, and thinking, ‘Is this the show I’ll write about? Is this the one?’ It’s like wondering who you’ll marry. You’re constantly dangling the line of your responses into the stream of exhibitions. For better or for worse, shows usually choose you.”
Material Breach – Moden Art Falling Apart
Modern art materials are falling apart in their cases and storage closets. “As the most adventurously made art ages, inherent vice has overtaken collectors and museums largely unprepared for its ravages. Fat is melting. Cellulose nitrate is powdering. Rubber is disintegrating. Nettles are crumbling. Dried mud is flaking and blowing away. The contemporary art conservator must be open to ingenious and humble solutions, not just technically sophisticated ones.”
Selling A Raphael To Save Art Heritage
After loaning his Raphael painting “The Madonna of the Pinks” for ten years to the National Gallery, the Duke of Northumberland decided to sell the painting to help pay for the upkeep of his estate. LA’s Getty Museum agreed to buy the painting, and the Duke has faced a barrage of criticism in Britain. Unfair, he says. He’s got to pay for his other obligations somehow. “I employ hundreds of people, maintain a historic landscape and look after one of the most important art collections in the country, enjoyed by more than 100,000 visitors each year. The cost is astronomic, but the entire business is vital to the economy of the region in tourism and related employment.”
Will UK Government Keep Raphael In Country?
The British government is expected this week to grant a temporary halt to export of Raphael’s “Madonna of the Pinks” to the US. “The new director of the National Gallery will then begin the fight of his life, to persuade the heritage lottery fund that saving Raphael’s exquisite Madonna of the Pinks is worth paying £20 million to one of the richest men in the country. The fund has the money: despite the sharp fall in lottery ticket sales it will have about £300 million to give away this year, as well as the interest on grants which have been allocated but not yet paid out.”
A Hundred Years Of Buying Art
“A century after it began with 53 members paying one guinea a year each, the National Art Collections Fund, now often known as the Art Fund, is Britain’s leading independent arts charity with 90,000 members paying a minimum of £32 annually. During those 100 years, it has bought or helped to buy 477,384 objects for British museums and art galleries with grants totalling almost £38 million. If past funding is converted into today’s equivalent sums, the NACF has helped public collections to the tune of £84,173,626.”
Are Easter Island Stone Heads Authentic?
Are two large Easter Island stone heads for sale in a Miami gallery really 1000 years old? “The Chilean government, which claimed the Pacific island in 1888, is investigating whether the pieces are genuine antiques smuggled from Chile or skillful reproductions. An expert on the island’s archaeology says they seem to be carved from island stone with modern tools.” Archeologists are on their way to investigate…
Finders Keepers?
Should big museums be considered “world” museums and be allowed to keep art they hauled off from other countries? Not surprisingly, the big museums think so. They signed a declaration asserting that policy in December. “So far the public debate has been conducted very much in terms of the value of restitution, but there has been much less debate about the importance of the context which a great museum offers.”